After Alice Fell(5)

The pine box rests on the floor. The men make quick work of the lid. I keep my eyes to the wallpaper. Every third vine on the wall changes pattern, turns another way, hides a bright-orange floret. Why did Cathy replace the original? There was nothing wrong with it; it was not out of style. It was an extravagant thing to do, and in the middle of the war.

“Hup,” one of them says. One at Alice’s head, the other at her feet, and they’ve laid her to the table with only a rustle of muslin and a light bump to the wood.

“The ice is under the yew, when you’re needing it.” I glance to the door, at Charlie with his cap stuffed in his belt, watch him step to pick up the leathers and roll them tight. He takes the hammer from the cabbie and sticks the handle in his belt next to his cap.

Cathy, at the head of the table, rubs and rubs her hand over her bodice. Then she lifts the watch pinned to her waistband. “Is that all?”

“That’s all, ma’am.”

“You’ll find lemonade and cake in the kitchen. Before you go.”

She moves from behind the table to close the double doors. Her hand is on the knob as she turns back to the room, and she twists it back and forth. Her eyes travel the long boards of the floor.

We must look. We must look.

The coffin’s top leans between two windows. The nails show, ready to return to their place. The long box stands alongside. I turn, catch the tip of a nose and curve of forehead, force myself to look. It’s not Alice here. It’s a body. Alice left when she fell off the roof. This is just a body.

Cathy’s lips tremble. She lets go the doorknob and takes a hesitant step.

“Will you read from the Bible, Cathy?”

Her face relaxes, eyes alit with relief. “Yes, of course I will.”

“Then I shall wash her.”

4573. This is the number stitched above Alice’s left pocket. Neat and small, in a blue thread. The cotton gown is shapeless, the buttons obscenely large. One has been ripped from the collar, and the one below is sewn with red thread. I fold back the fabric: Alice is barely there. The poke of ribs, breasts small and shriveled though she is but twenty-four. Her stomach is concave, slung between the jut of her hipbones, marbling now in greens.

I shift Alice to undress one arm and then another. Cathy murmurs from her perch on a chair, peering up every so often from the Bible she holds flat to her lap. She murmurs, and outside the glass the cicadas buzz.

Alice is light as air; I expected the weight I’d grown used to when preparing the men at the field hospital. Like the dead men, she is silent and does not complain about the indignity of her naked body exposed to all and sundry.

I fold the garment and set it on a chair, though my only plan is to burn it. The water in the blue filigreed bowl is tepid. I circle the washcloth, squeeze it, and listen to the drops.

Her skin has begun to slough from muscle and bone. I hold her hand, press the cloth between the fingers. Her nails are short from biting them; a bad habit she never broke. We have the same curve to our ring fingers. I rub at her wrist, but the mud-brown ring remains stubborn. I turn her hand, palm up. The underside of her wrist is white, the veins a blue black.

I round the table. Touch my thumbs to a bruise that runs from temple to temple, then run my gaze to the faint stippling of color across her chest, across both upper arms. Another band of yellowing at the wrists. Again, across her thighs and ankles. Across the tops of her feet. Each band of discoloration uniform in width. Like leather belts buckled one hole too tight.

With a quick turn, I yank open a curtain for more light. Cathy straightens in her chair and stops reading.

“What is this?”

She won’t look. Her eyelids flit, and she gives a minute shake of her head.

“What did they do to her?”

The Bible slips from Cathy’s lap, hitting the floor with a thud as she stands. Her eyes slide across Alice’s body, and she lets out a sharp gasp. “Oh, no. Oh, Alice.”

I slap the cloth to the table and stride to the door, out to the hall, lunging up the stairs past the walls of bilious peonies, turning at the landing to Toby’s room. The door is ajar. Toby shrieks a laugh. I push into the room, find Lionel crouched on the floor in the center of a cast-iron train set. Toby shrinks into the corner by the hobby horse.

“Have you seen her? In all this time, have you ever seen her?”

Lionel stands and steps from the circle of flatbeds and caboose. He grips my arm tight near the elbow and half pushes, half pulls me from the room. “Not here.”

“Did you visit her?”

“She didn’t want to see me.”

My shoulder catches a picture frame, tilting Mother’s image and pushing the far corner against the curio.

“You’re hurting Auntie.” Toby cowers against the door, a stuffed toy rabbit crushed between his hands.

Lionel turns to him, loosening his grip. “Get back in your room.”

Toby darts past us, bouncing from Lionel’s leg to the railing before tearing down the stairs.

“Don’t let him—Lionel, don’t let him.”

The boy is too fast. He slips past Cathy, aiming for the dining room, stopping in his tracks at the door.

No one moves. We all stare at Toby staring at Alice on the table. He turns his head: to me, to Lionel, to Cathy.

Cathy circles round him to pull the door tight. “Come here, my boy.” She drops to her knees and draws him to her, enveloping him in the billows of her skirt. He arches back, quivering and tense as a bow, and lets out a scream. He bats her hands from him, clawing at her cheek, kicking to be let go. She fingers a scratch on her jaw, then slaps him.